


Kidnapped

by Josselin



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 08:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12055245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: Nikandros was trying to talk to him about practicalities, but here was no room in Damen’s mind for practicalities. There were only thoughts of Laurent and of Leon, and of getting them back and of killing the men who had taken them, and Nikandros’s questions were like pesky flies bothering a horse.





	Kidnapped

Nikandros was trying to talk to him about practicalities, but here was no room in Damen’s mind for practicalities. There were only thoughts of Laurent and of Leon, and of getting them back and of killing the men who had taken them, and Nikandros’s questions were like pesky flies bothering a horse.

“We know they went north,” said Damen. “We need to keep going north.”

Nikandros had some argument about this, and about how it might be prudent to send a scouting party. Damen was not able to focus on all of his words. He felt as though half of his attention was as distant as the rest of his family, off with his husband and his son, and that everything in his world would only be right again when he got them back.

Nikandros had fallen silent, perhaps recognizing Damen’s inattention. “Old friend,” Nikandros said. “You realize that it is possible–” he trailed off delicately.

“It is not,” said Damen. He refused to believe that Laurent and Leon were not still alive.

“There has not been a ransom–”

“I do not wish to speak of it,” said Damen. “We must keep going north.”

Nikandros opened his mouth to argue again, but both of them were interrupted by a sentry. “There’s a rider!”

They both turned their horses toward the sound of the sentry, and there was indeed an approaching rider. It was a single rider, not a group, and the horse was galloping toward them at full speed.

Nikandros frowned. “Perhaps a ransom messenger.”

“Good, we can question him,” said Damen.

The rider did not slow as he approached the camp, and the Akielons readied their weapons.

“Hold,” Nikandros said.

Damen only half-heard his friend. He was staring at the rider, who was small on top of the large horse. The rider did not seem to be controlling the horse, simply holding on as the horse ran. None of this made sense for a messenger.

The sentry was shouting at the rider to announce himself and declare his business with the king, and Nikandros was saying something else that sounded like waves on the cliffs of Ios in Damen’s ears. The hoofbeats of the approaching horse grew lower. And then Damen was dismounting from his own horse just in time to catch his son as Leon fell off of the horse.

Leon was crying.

Damen had ascertained through patting him down and talking to him seriously through his tears that the boy wasn’t hurt, and then Paschal had inspected the boy anyway while Damen was still holding him and Leon was still crying into his shoulder. It did not seem that he was injured, simply overwhelmed and upset and–Damen had perhaps admitted this even before he’d been kidnapped–a bit high strung.

Damen himself didn’t remember crying quite so much as a boy, and wondered if Leon got that from his mother. Laurent didn’t seem to take much notice of it as a problem or of Leon in one of his moods, and simply let Leon sit next to him until he got bored.

But Laurent wasn’t here and Damen wasn’t letting go of Leon.

When Damen had caught Leon, Nikandros had caught the reins of Damen’s horse and Pallas had caught and calmed the tired mount Leon had arrived on. They’d inspected the horse for clues, and Damen tried to talk to Leon about what had happened.

Leon was not particularly useful. The five-year-old was somewhat prone to embroidery or exaggeration in normal circumstances, and Damen did not think that he was exaggerating now, but his account did not seem particularly reliable. He said he’d been with Papa, and they had been traveling–that much Damen knew–and that then there had been men with swords. At this point Leon burst into tears again and Damen’s leather shoulder armor was smeared with snot.

Leon’s account of the men who’d taken them was not very descriptive or particularly useful, simply that they had been “bad” men, “with beards”, and that they’d said they would hurt Papa–Damen winced at this but it wasn’t especially surprising.

Then apparently Laurent had told Leon that he had had a plan, and that Leon had to listen very carefully and do exactly what he said, which Leon proclaimed seriously between hiccuping sobs that he had listened and he’d done exactly what Papa had said. To Damen, it seemed that Laurent had done something to create a distraction and then thrown Leon on a horse and told him to go.

“And now he’s dead!” said Leon, bursting into tears again. Damen exchanged looks with Nikandros. Damen was better at interpreting his son’s tears than Nikandros was. Laurent was better than either of them but he wasn’t here. But Leon’s final pronouncement seemed clear enough.

“Dead?” Damen said.

“They pushed him in the pit,” said Leon, and then he threw his arms around Damen’s neck again and broke into almost silent distressed sobs again. Damen rubbed his back comfortingly.

Nikandros was talking about what this meant, and the information they’d managed to glean from the mount Leon had arrived on, and the direction they should head.

Leon was insisting that Papa had said to find father, and that he had, and he’d done what he was supposed to and why had they pushed Papa into the pit.

“Yes, you were exactly right,” Damen said to Leon. “You were supposed to come to me and you did.”

Leon eventually fell asleep against Damen’s shoulder. Damen and Nikandros began talking about their next steps more seriously.

“They won’t be pleased to lose the prince,” Nikandros said, nodding at Leon.

Damen said nothing and patted sleeping Leon on the back.

“It’s possible–” Nikandros started again.

“It’s not,” said Damen. “We ride. I’m going to kill them.”

“Perhaps you should set the prince down?” Nikandros suggested, looking uncomfortable discussing military plans while Damen held a sleeping child.

“No,” said Damen, and they continued.

***

Damen came to his senses slowly. Nikandros was calling to him. Damen lowered his weapon and Nikandros approached slowly.

“Is Leon all right?” said Damen.

“He’s fine with Pallas. Damen, they are all dead.”

Damen looked around the courtyard of the keep; he’d been fighting from an advantageous position in one of the corners. The courtyard was littered with the bodies of the kidnappers; Damen counted seven men.

“We still haven’t found his majesty,” said Nikandros. There was an unspoken criticism in his voice, that Damen ought to have been less ruthless in his taking of the keep so that they could have questioned some of the men who was were manning the garrison. Damen supposed it would have been satisfying to make some of them suffer more slowly.

Leon had said that the ‘pit’ Laurent had fallen into had been near to the horse Laurent had put him on, but Damen couldn’t picture how that might might have worked. “Let’s search,” he said, keeping his sword in his hand as he and Nikandros moved into the keep.

The keep was small, a lookout tower with a few rooms and a winding staircase up to the ramparts. The staircase was narrow enough that only one man could go up or down at a time and the steps were uneven. The rest of the keep was just the courtyard and the wall.  
There was nothing that Damen or Nikandros could find in the keep. The floor was stone and there was no evidence of a pit or oubliette. There weren’t any windows, only slits for arrows.

“Perhaps they moved him,” Nikandros voice was again holding the unspoken accusation that it would be helpful if Damen had left one of the men alive for questioning.

Damen stepped out of the keep and back into the courtyard. Nikandros followed. The other Akielons were gathering up the bodies of the dead on one side of the courtyard and searching them for clues. The only other thing in the courtyard was a stack of hay bales. “Get Leon,” he said. “We’ll ask him if he’s been here before.”

Nikandros went back through the gate.

Damen found himself staring absently at the bales of hay. Why would they have moved their captive? They were entrenched in their defense in this keep and did not seem to have ready access to other resources, or they would have retreated when he and Nikandros attacked. Though they had taken them by surprise.

There was something else that was niggling at Damen’s mind, thinking of all of the other keeps of this type that he’d been inside. It was odd that the keep had no well. Did they not have a water supply? He hadn’t seen any barrels or a cistern, either. And yet–

Hay was easily moved. Damen moved the bales to the other side of the courtyard and brushed away the remaining hay with his foot. The floor in this corner of the courtyard was wooden planks. Damen knocked on one of them, and it was hollow beneath. He pried the plank up and tossed it to the other side of the courtyard with the hay bales. He squinted down into the darkness below. There was a hole. He couldn’t tell how deep it was.

“Hello?” he said.

“Damen?”

Damen was so grateful to hear Laurent’s voice that he fell forward on his hands and knees next to the remaining planks.

“You’re alive,” he said. He waved to the other men across the courtyard to come help him and he pried up on a second plank covering the pit.

“If you’ve gotten yourself captured, I’m going to kill you,” said Laurent, and Damen thought that his voice sounded slightly tremulous.

“I’ve taken the keep,” Damen said.

“The men?” said Laurent.

“Dead,” said Damen, pulling up a third plank.

“Damen,” said Laurent, and Damen paused with his hands on the fourth plank because Laurent’s voice had a note of true urgency in it now. “Leon isn’t with me–”

“I have him,” said Damen.

It was Laurent’s turn to make a relieved noise, just as Nikandros was returning to the courtyard carrying Leon. Leon was pointing urgently toward the corner where Damen had uncovered the pit.

“Father!” Leon said.

“We found him,” Damen told Nikandros.

“Leon!” Laurent called from the pit, and Leon started wiggling urgently in Nikandros’s arms. “Papa!”

“Stay back!” Laurent said. “Don’t fall in.”

Nikandros handed the squirming Leon to Damen, who kept a tight grasp on him so he wouldn’t crane too far in his effort to see Laurent and fall in himself.

“Laurent, are you hurt?” said Damen.

Laurent didn’t immediately reply, and since Laurent was the type to dismiss a stab wound as 'a scratch’, that probably meant it was fairly serious.

“If we lower a rope, can you climb out?” said Damen.

There was another long pause. “Probably not,” said Laurent.

“Are you in danger down there?” said Damen. “Is there–” he stopped, suddenly keenly aware that Leon was listening intently in his arms and not wanting to give the child more ideas.

“There aren’t snakes, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Laurent, and his tone was dry enough that Damen felt at least slightly relieved.

The courtyard became a flurry of soldiers as Damen issued orders to the Akielons. He sent one soldier off to fetch Paschal, and another to find rope, and a small group of them was tasked with figuring out how to get Laurent out of the pit, and then he told another to find him a torch so he could see what the situation was. Leon had to be held carefully to ensure he didn’t crane over too far trying to look for Laurent at the bottom of the pit and fall in; Damen kept that task for himself.

Paschal was found but was not able to do much until they could raise Laurent up or lower the physician down. Pallas finally ran back to the pit with a rope, and they fastened the rope to a tree on the other end of the courtyard, and then Damen traded the remaining rope from Pallas for Leon. “Do not let him fall in the pit,” Damen said.

“Yes, exalted,” said Pallas seriously.

Damen slowly lowered the rope into the pit, not wanting to throw the rope and accidentally hit Laurent in the head. Eventually the rope hit something; it seemed twenty feet down or so.

“Do you see the rope?” Damen asked Laurent.

Laurent confirmed that he did, so Damen secured the rope again, tested it with his weight, and then lowered himself over the edge of the pit and began climbing down. Lydos was becoming creative and attaching a lantern to another rope and starting to lower it down as well, which let Damen see more clearly.

The pit seemed to be a dried up well. From the bottom, the surface was a bright hole, and when the men poked their heads over to look in they only looked like dark shadows. Laurent was at the bottom of the pit, sitting half propped against one of the dirt walls. Damen could see immediately that Laurent’s left leg was bent in an unnatural way.

He reached toward Laurent and Laurent put out a hand to grasp his, and Damen felt as though their hand clasp as he released the end of the rope was as passionate as any of their previous reunions. “How are you hurt? 

“My leg,” said Laurent, nodding toward where it was resting. “I cut my arm when I fell.” He showed Damen his forearm. The cut was shallow and not serious. The broken leg was the concerning injury. 

“How long have you been down here?” said Damen.

“Perhaps you could tell me,” said Laurent. “I could not see any light. It was very hard to keep track of time.”

Damen nodded.

Pallas interrupted their conversation from the top of the pit. “Exalted! We’re going to lower down a litter!”

“Good!” said Damen toward Pallas. He used a quieter tone with Laurent. “Leon arrived with me about thirty hours ago,” he said. “He said he saw you fall in here as he left. We were about three hours of hard riding from the keep? So it has been perhaps a day and a half.”

“It has felt longer,” said Laurent. He wouldn’t say more, not with the men listening from the top of the pit, but Damen could see his eyes in the light of the lantern Pallas had lowered, and he could glimpse in them something of what Laurent had felt. Damen still had hold of his hand, so he squeezed it again comfortingly.

Pallas and Atkis lowered a litter, but before Damen could contemplate how to move Laurent on to it, Paschal was climbing down the rope and Lydos was lowering his physician’s bag next to him. Paschal gave Laurent some sort of draught for pain, and then used a board and a roll of cloth to splint the broken leg, and he looked cursorily at Laurent’s cut arm before he told Damen it was time to move him on to the litter. 

There was not really enough room for three men at the dry bottom of a well, and the operation was a complicated combination of Laurent half lifting himself and Damen half rolling him into the litter. Laurent did not say anything but Damen could guess from his expression that the move was excruciating. 

Being raised out of the hole was not likely to be any more comfortable. Damen and Paschal watched from the bottom as Pallas organized the hoisting of the litter from the surface, and Damen yelled up at them instructions to hoist “More gently! With less jarring!” but it was an ineffective effort on his part. 

After Laurent was clear to the surface, Damen could hear him talking to Leon. Leon was crying again, and Laurent’s voice was calm. Damen wanted to climb up immediately to join them, but he left Paschal use the ladder first and only once the physician had also disappeared to the surface was Damen able to follow.

Once Damen reached the surface, Leon was being held at bay from Laurent’s injuries by Nikandros, but the prince was straining for Laurent and Laurent had stretched out his uninjured arm Leon’s direction and Leon was clinging to it. Paschal had Pallas and Lydos organizing the men to cover up the hole again for safety and to set up a tent so he could tend to Laurent.

Damen took Leon from Nikandros and watched the physician work. Paschal sent for a saddlebag of water and Laurent reached for it greedily, and Paschal cautioned him about drinking too quickly because he would make himself sick. Damen had seen other men desperate for water ignore such advice but Laurent’s iron will held him back, and he sipped carefully at the canteen. 

Leon was amidst a long and complicated justification for how it was not his fault that Papa had been thrown into a pit. No one was listening very attentively to Leon, but every so often Laurent murmured something like, “Of course not,” or “Yes, yes” or “No, you didn’t” so he seemed to be hearing more of the words than Damen was.

Laurent was given another draught of something from Paschal’s bag, Laurent’s scratched arm was bandaged, and then Paschal turned his attention to the broken leg. He used a scissor to cut off the leg of Laurent’s pants, and then a knife to help remove his boot from around the swelling. Laurent closed his eyes and set his teeth.

Damen was distracted by his son patting his chest. “Father,” Leon said repeatedly. 

“What?”

“Nikandros said you killed the bad men.”

Leon was perched on Damen’s thigh, both of them were seated a few feet from where Paschal had settled Laurent on the ground. Leon looked up at Damen. “Yes,” said Damen.

“All of the bad men?” said Leon, biting his lip.

Damen wasn’t certain whether Leon was looking for a yes or a no response to his question, but he found it generally best not to try to outthink Leon, who seemed to have Laurent’s complicated maze of thought patterns. Leon might be having a moment of softheartedness for his captors, or perhaps he had argued with Nikandros about this, or he wanted reassurance that the men who had taken him were gone. It was too hard to guess. Honesty was better. “Yes.”

This pleased Leon, anyway, and he relaxed against Damen’s chest, smiling. “I told them you would,” said Leon.

They set up the camp in the small keep, with a double watch going not so much because anyone thought that there were remaining kidnappers at large, but because everyone remained on edge. 

Pallas brought Laurent some food, which he ate gratefully, and Paschal bandaged his arm, which was not badly cut. 

Leon fell asleep in Damen’s lap, and then some pallets were laid out in the keep building for Damen and Laurent. Paschal dosed Laurent with painkillers again, and Laurent was moved to the pallet indoors using the same litter they’d constructed before. Damen carried Leon in also and though he did not intend to sleep, he found himself counting the breaths of Leon and Laurent. Laurent was on the pallet a few feet away and Leon was sleeping on his chest. It was soothing enough to have both of them so near that he did fall asleep after all.

In the morning Damen woke because Leon was poking him. “Father!” Leon said. “Father! I have to pee!”

“Fine,” Damen said, half asleep. “Go ahead.”

“There’s no chamber pot,” said Leon.

Damen groaned. “Go outside.”

“What if there are bad men?” Leon sounded stricken, and his tone woke Damen completely. 

Damen sat up. “I’ll come with you.”

Leon took his hand and they walked outside. The guards saluted and Damen nodded back, yawning. 

Afterward, Leon said, “I want to wash!”

“There’s no baths here, Leon,” said Damen.

“But I am filthy,” said Leon. He had learned that phrase and the tone with which he said it from Laurent. 

“You’ll have to wait a while,” said Damen. 

“I don’t want to wait,” said Leon. 

Damen shrugged. “What do you suggest?”

Leon looked around, as though a bath might be hiding behind something in the courtyard and he just hadn’t spotted it yet. “Find me a bath, Father.”

No one dared speak to Damen the way his son did, except perhaps Laurent. Damen couldn’t help but laugh, and he scooped small, admittedly dirty Leon up into his arms. 

“But Papa’s leg is broken,” he pointed out. “He can’t travel to the baths, and we don’t want to leave him behind.”

Leon considered this. “Bring the baths here.”

“That sounds hard,” said Damen. 

Leon seemed to think that it was not beyond Damen’s power, though, and he objected while Damen carried him back into the keep. 

Nikandros stopped them at the door. “His majesty and Paschal are conversing and asked for privacy.”

Damen tried to step around Nikandros. “He didn’t mean from me, Nikandros.”

Nikandros placed a hand on Damen’s chest. “He specifically said you, Damen.”

Damen and Nikandros began a rather loud argument about Nikandros’s right to bar Damen from seeing Laurent. After a few moments, Leon began punctuating the argument by saying, “Listen to Father!” to Nikandros, which would have been humorous under other circumstances.

Fortunately the argument was interrupted before it escalated to physical violence. Paschal opened the door from the inside, looked at the three of them and their racket, and said, “You can come in.”

Damen handed Leon to Nikandros. 

“I want a bath,” Leon told Nikandros. Damen left the two of them to that debate and proceeded into the keep to see Laurent.

Laurent was awake. He looked tired and wan. “Damen,” he said. “I need you to take Leon away for a while.”

“No,” said Damen. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Paschal thinks that my leg has started to heal incorrectly,” said Laurent. “That the bone is twisted and trying to grow back together in that fashion. If it heals twisted that might prevent me from being able to walk, or run, or ride.”

Damen frowned. “He must fix it.” He felt out of his depth, something like Leon commanding a bath to appear in a forsaken keep with no water.

“Yes,” said Laurent. “So you must take Leon away.”

“No, I am staying with you.”

“You must take Leon,” said Laurent. “Because Paschal must rebreak my leg to splint it properly, and that is going to be painful. I am going to scream, and I do not want Leon to hear, but neither do I want Leon to be alone.”

Damen felt as petulant as his son. “I don’t want to leave you,” he objected. 

“You must,” said Laurent.

Damen took Laurent’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “I love you. I was terrified when you were taken.”

The edges of Laurent’s eyes crinkled. “I love you,” he said. “I was worried you would blame me for letting Leon be taken.”

“You saved Leon,” said Damen. 

“I blame myself,” said Laurent. 

“Leon is fine. He’s dirty,” said Damen. “He wants to take a bath.”

Laurent laughed weakly. “Go help him clean up. Stay away for half a day.”

Reluctantly, Damen split the troop of men he’d been searching with and left half of them with Laurent and took half of them along to the river. He glared warningly at Paschal and Nikandros before he left, and then he seated Leon in front of him on the horse and they started riding.

There was a river a few miles off where the men had been watering the horses. When they reached a flat area along the bed, Damen helped Leon strip out of his clothes and then held his hand as they waded into the water. 

“It’s cold,” Leon said. 

Damen braced himself for further objections to the water from his son, but that was the extent of it. Leon splashed around happily in the shallows for a while. Damen helped him to shake his clothes in the water in a poor attempt to clean them, and then laid them in the sun to dry. 

Pallas told Leon that if he stayed still enough in the water minnows might come bite at his toes, and Leon was intrigued, but he wasn’t good at standing still enough for this to actually happen. Instead, he chased phantom small fish around the shallows. Then he chased a pretend fish into a bed of cattails, and when he came out Damen noticed he had three leeches on his legs, and Leon was very displeased when Damen told him he had to hold still and let Damen peel the leeches off his skin. Leon was even more displeased by the way his legs were bleeding after Damen did so.

“Father, I need a bandage,” he said.

“They are very small holes,” said Damen. “You are fine.”

“There is blood,” said Leon, beginning to sound worked up.

“Not very much,” said Damen. “Like you were poked with a pin.”

“I don’t want to be poked with a pin!” said Leon. Damen could feel a meltdown beginning. “I don’t like leeches!”

Damen felt near to a meltdown himself. He disliked being away from Laurent; his thoughts were with his husband. “Let’s go back to see Papa,” he suggested, trying to distract Leon, and Leon sniffled a little bit but allowed himself to be rinsed off a final time and put back on the horse. 

Leon continued to complain on the ride back that his clothes were wet and that his legs were still bleeding.

“You can have the physician look at them when we get back,” said Damen.

When they returned the keep was quiet. Nikandros assured Damen that all was well and that the sentries remained vigilant but saw nothing. Damen sought out Paschal, who assured him that the leg was splinted as well as possible and that Laurent was resting. 

Damen looked in on Laurent, somehow unable to relax until he saw Laurent with his own eyes. Laurent was asleep, and his leg was wrapped up in a large splint. Damen pressed a kiss to his forehead and left the chamber so he wouldn’t disturb Laurent unduly. When he went back to the courtyard, Leon was showing Paschal his leech bites and Paschal was inspecting them seriously. They had stopped bleeding on the ride back to the keep.

“I see,” said Paschal, holding Leon’s sandal. 

“Father pulled them off and threw them in the river,” said Leon, speaking Veretian. He was more fluent in Veretian than Damen had been at his age.

“Very good,” said Paschal. “I think your highness will be fine.”

“Do I need a bandage?” said Leon.

Paschal put Leon’s sandal back on. “I think not, your highness.”

They began to form some routines centered around the abandoned keep. Laurent was healing but travel remained impractical. Damen refused to leave without him, despite repeated suggestions from both the Akielon and Veretian commanders that ruling the country would be easier if one of them, at least, would return to the capital. 

Nikandros did not bother making such arguments with Damen. He did suggest once that it might be easier to safely care for Leon back at the capital, but Damen said, “No, he stays with us,” and Nikandros let it drop.

Damen and Leon formed a habit of going to the river to wash and bring back water. Leon did not come to like leeches any better but he did learn to avoid the cattails so they wouldn’t stick to him. Pallas drew games in the dirt of the keep’s courtyard and Leon played with the off-duty guards. 

Laurent spent much of the first week seemingly slightly drunk from the painkilling potions Paschal kept feeding him. The second week Laurent began refusing any painkillers that affected his head, which led him to speak more lucidly when he was awake, but he was clearly continually in pain.

By the end of the second week, even Laurent was suggesting that Damen return to the capital with Leon, and Laurent’s temper was so short by that point that Damen was beginning to be tempted.

Damen consulted with Paschal. “There must be something to reduce his pain,” said Damen. Leon came along, because Leon frequently followed Damen around. Leon tried on Paschal’s hat. It covered most of his head and he wandered around blind, giggling to himself. 

“He’s refusing the only medicines I have,” said Paschal. “He doesn’t like how they make him feel.”

“Something without those effects,” said Damen.

Paschal shook his head. “There is no such magic.”

Leon tripped and fell over; Damen looked over at him. The hat fell off Leon’s head. He laughed and put it back on. “Father, look, I’m wearing a physician’s hat!”

“I see,” said Damen. Damen turned back to Paschal. “Something you have read about? Heard from another physician?”

Paschal frowned, thinking. “Nothing I have supplies for.”

“We can send for supplies,” said Damen. 

Paschal was still frowning. “I am not sure the herbs are even in season.”

Damen sighed. “I feel so helpless. I wish there were something that I could do to help him.”

Paschal brightened suddenly. “I do have one idea.”

“Go on.”

“A healer I met in Vask swore that orgasms provided powerful pain relief. I don’t know if his majesty would consider it, but you could ask him?”

The physician was matter of fact, but Damen felt himself slowly beginning to blush. “Give me the list of supplies to send for,” he said. To Leon, “Give the doctor back his hat, Leon.”

Leon returned the hat and allowed himself to be led off. “Father, what’s orgasms?”

Damen could feel himself blushing further. “Ask Nikandros,” said Damen, and he left his son with his friend to go speak with Laurent.

Afterward, Damen looked at Laurent hopefully. “Did it work?”

Laurent smiled. “It’s hard to say,” he teased. “I might require ongoing treatment.”

Damen laughed.

There was no further talk of Damen and Leon returning to Marlas without Laurent. 

When Laurent was well enough to travel, they went to Marlas all together. Laurent made a full recovery. And if his leg pained him occasionally during bad weather in the years to come, it was a good excuse for Damen to administer another treatment. 

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> [reblog on tumblr!](http://josselinkohl.tumblr.com/post/165206763587/laurent-gets-kidnapped-part-1010-yay-previous), [check out the author's other Captive Prince fic!](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=kudos_count&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=0&fandom_id=3516977&user_id=Josselin)


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